Known techniques of terminating conductor wire to a terminal include soldering, welding, wire-wrapping, insulation displacement and crimping. Such techniques do not work well with very small diameter wire, or are otherwise very expensive for mass production or automatic assembly.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,038,958, 3,777,051, and 3,878,318 disclose using an anvil to strike a relatively large diameter conductor wire (such as of aluminum) to tamp the wire into a groove of a terminal, the groove having a width about the same as the diameter of the wire but having an undercut below the terminal surface so that the wire is deformed outwardly into the undercut to fit the shape of the groove and be held therein. U.S. Pat. No. 4,173,388 also discloses deforming a wire into a groove of a contact plate to wedge it between the sides of the groove and then fusing the wire to the contact. All these references teach deforming the wire, which is not desirable with wire of very small diameter because it is likely to significantly effect the resistance characteristics of the wire or even cause breakage of the wire.
It is desirable to provide an assured termination of a wire having very small diameter such as 0.0015 inches or less, to a contact terminal without welding or soldering.